Conventional techniques for remotely controlling a computer tend to be relatively heavy-weight applications that require transferring relatively large amounts of video data, such as screen shots or a video representation of a user's “desktop.” For instance, PCAnywhere is a software product of this type that allows a person to use one computer to remotely control another computer. Client-server software is also available from Citrix Systems of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. These types of remote-control software often undesirably require a specialized scripting environment, such as Java Script, and/or specialized communication protocols.
Due to the relatively large amounts of data transferred from the computer being controlled to the remotely controlling computer, these conventional remote-control techniques are not well suited to remotely controlling a computer via a wireless client device, such as a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) phone or personal digital assistant (PDA).
A light-weight server that transfers a relatively small amount of data between a computer being remotely controlled and the remotely controlling computer and that uses standard unmodified web browsers, such as standard HTTP web browsers and/or Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) browsers, would therefore be desirable.